Hollow inside

Sometimes I think there is something in me, something that should be there, that is missing. There are times when I feel so empty inside, like a hollow shell, or like the cave that the bear has crawled into to hibernate. But winter has gone on so long, is the bear still sleeping? Or has it passed on, died in the dark, never to be seen again? Was there even a bear to begin with, or just the idea of one, the memory of a bear, the merest spirit?

Like something inside has snapped off, jaggedly, something that had formed whole and right, now broken without chance of repair. Because my insides are not made of china or metal, to be fixed with epoxy, nor wood and paper to be repaired by glue; but like things that never went together, gluing plastic to feathers, china to wood trying vainly to put things that never belonged, or more likely trying to repair for the countless number of times something that had been fixed again and again, with none of the original material showing, only layer upon layer of what was used to mend them. No matter how much talk, how much time or what kind of medicine, the damage remains, raw and jagged still.

Sometimes I wonder if it did not snap off, if that is the sound of the misplaced piece banging against the other parts of me. I speculate sometimes, perhaps that part just never formed, never existed from the start, a vestigial part of what in everyone else is so vital to life. Is it genetic this missing bit? Something I should have inherited from them both, that I only got half the chromosomes for? I sit here feeling hollow, empty of something that would make me like other people. I’m wrong inside, I’m different. Maybe this is part of the brain damage that long ago obstetrician predicted, maybe it is as simple as that. Or sometimes I fear that it was there, but it was trained out of me, warped beyond recognition: some internal form of foot binding, stunting the growth of that thing that could allow me to be like other people.

There is no one like me, not that I’ve ever met. I fake normal so well, but inside it is so exhausting. Each day is a climb up Everest, an endless foray into holding my breath under deep water surrounded by sharks. I don’t understand the games, I so desperately try to play them without knowing the rules, without being able to comprehend the motions that everyone goes through. I’ve no patience for things that everyone else doesn’t even appear to realize they endure; I feel the anger in me simmering on a low boil. I feel the fear radiate from me, like heat off the blacktop in summer, in response to things that no one is afraid of. I have to squelch down the laughter that bubbles up at all the wrong times, over things that ought to make me cry – things that make everyone else cry.

And now even in my freakishness, I lament the uneven healing, the sudden return of the ability to cry. Tears over everything, over nothing; all the tears I could never cry as a child. All the tears saved up from the times I could have cried, should have cried. Tears for my family gone, my Papa, my Nana, for dear Auntie. Tears for the pain and the sting of beatings long gone, for humiliations and venomous words casually thrown like confetti; now they come, they force their way our, taking over my face, wracking me with sobs. Now the control that was forced upon me in self defense crumbles away, dry and useless, poorly constructed of sandbags meant only to stem the flood of pain, to hold the onslaught of rushing danger as it broke in horrific waves around me.
I am wrong inside, I am broken. And so alone in myself, so needy, that I reach out constantly, something to fill that empty space. I have thrown so many things in that deep cave that is me, so much excess, so much to substitute for what I am missing. So many things I have done that no good sane person would, so much I have tolerated in mistreatment and abuse to try to fix what is broken. But what is in me is fatally flawed, no matter how much love or sex or food I might attempt to glue the broken bits together with. There is no touch, no taste, nothing to see or say that will fix it.

So on I go, seeking desperately, trying to find someone to understand. Yet even as I find them, those who could help me, would not understand, but care, I cannot tell them. I simple can’t make my mouth say the words. I hide from them, terrified that if I let them see this empty hollow space inside of myself, or my desperate attempts to fill it they would be so appalled, so filled with pity and loathing, they would flee. They would back away slowly, expecting the bear to charge out of the mean dank cave that is me, speaking soothing words, hoping to prevent attack. But in the end, once they were away, they would never come back, never put themselves in a place to look into that hollow empty chasm of my soul. And if I misjudge, then instead of backing away, spouting gentle phrases to cover their escape, they will instead throw heavy, sharp edged words, aiming to kill whatever lurks deep inside me. Not able to realize that what ever was in me, if it even existed, has probably died, starved in its broken pathetic existence.

Even those that would stay, would not run, my mistrusting heart cannot accept that they could possibly see what I am. So I have never let anyone see it all. I cannot, the way a person cannot help but jerk the gun away from their head at the last second. Self preservation is too strong, despite what I am, even Grendel did not wish to end what pathetic existence he had. So no one may ever see, not the fullness that is the internal destruction of who I am, of what I cannot claim to be. I was always afraid, even to this day, that if my friends ever got together and assembled the little pieces of me that I have given each of them, of what the picture they formed of me would be. How would I fare, in my monstrous abnormality, all of my weaknesses fully naked in the light of scrutiny?

Always then, potentially, a fatal mistake to tell anyone. Maybe he was right, in that one thing he spoke the bald truth, that one statement had merit, sometimes, you can’t tell anyone. Because the only thing worse than no one believing you, is when someone does.